Allie Burns - The Lido Girls

Delphi was blotting her nose again. Her hairdo seemed so impractical, with her blond locks fastened in a complicated twist at the nape of her neck. But that wasn’t what concerned Natalie. For some inexplicable reason her friend’s nose always bubbled with tiny beads of sweat just before one of her sleeping fits. Extremes of emotion, including excitement, were just the things that caused her to black out.

At the sight of the sweat on her friend’s nose, apprehension descended on Natalie. What if Delphi does have a sleeping fit in the midst of all these women?

‘Are you sure this is a good idea?’ she whispered in her ear.

‘Please don’t,’ Delphi said with her usual soft defiance, powdering her nose to blot away the perspiration. ‘I’m tired of my health holding me back.’ She had slipped off her dress and was smoothing down the white V-necked blouse beneath. ‘What about your hankie?’

‘Blast.’

Natalie had forgotten the handkerchief. The League had been very clear that it must be pressed and placed in the left leg of her elasticated satin shorts. Not that there was much room for anything inside those shorts.

‘You’ll have to borrow mine if you get upset. They’re going to pay tribute to Prunella’s mother.’

Prunella Stack, the founder’s recently bereaved daughter, was now in charge of the League.

They followed the chattering girls through to the Grand Hall. The hairs on her arms stood tall again. The sweeping latticed glass ceiling, way above them in the heavens, was both a hothouse that at once amplified the chatter of two and a half thousand excited women, while also bringing them closer to the serenity of the clouds above on this grey April day.

She threaded an arm through Delphi’s and they smiled at one another, sharing the thrill of the moment, the tingle in the air.

A troop of women brushed past them as they marched up and down behind banners from their home towns or counties; first Portsmouth went by, then Yorkshire was followed by a rowdy group from Yeovil. On either side of the central concourse – the same dimensions as a swimming pool, though broader and longer than anything she’d ever seen – were steep-sided seats for the spectators: the children, sisters, brothers and husbands of the women demonstrating today.

‘I want to be near the front,’ Delphi said, ‘as close to Prunella as possible.’

Natalie held back, noticing the flashbulbs coming from the front. Prunella had been the main topic of many of Delphi’s letters, but they had to be practical and not get too close. They’d both told lies so they could be there today. It would do neither of them any good to find themselves pictured in the press, nor would it help Delphi’s career prospects if she had a sleeping fit right at the foot of the stage.

Delphi gave up on pushing through when an instruction came for them to sit down. They noisily lowered to the cool concrete floor and sat cross-legged. Delphi and Natalie squeezed into a row in the midst of a group of Scots wearing tartan ribbons on their shoulders, about half a dozen lines from the very front. They had an excellent view of the stage and the three-piece jazz band, but were safe from the photographers, and hidden from view should Delphi take a turn.

Natalie lifted her head and looked all the way behind her at the rows and rows of ladies, all in matching white shirts and black shorts. All with their hair set in waves.

For all their uniformity, the women inside the outfits were much more of a mixture than she’d expected. At her college there was a definite sort of girl who thrived there – she’d been one herself – usually wealthy, or as in her case, with a father in a respectable profession.

These ladies weren’t of one sort at all. Some were their age – surplus women as the press liked to label them, women like she and Delphi, in their thirties, still single and not much hope of that ever changing. The loss of so many men in the war had seen to that. Not that she’d ever give up the hope of finding a husband. Others around them wore more lines about the eyes, and had rounder hips. War widows, no doubt .

All of them, whatever their age or circumstance, had come more out of the need for company than exercise and so for that reason she should fit right in, but still she couldn’t shake the feeling that she was wrong to have come.

Prunella, with glowing skin, nape-length bouncy curls and a radiant smile, welcomed them all to this special memorial rally. The rumour in the Phys Ed corridors was that first the Women’s League founder, Mary Bagot Stack, and now her daughter, Prunella, the so-called Perfect Woman , had made themselves rich on a system of exercise with no grounding in science and no discipline whatsoever. They were simply profiting from lonely women like her and Delphi.

Prunella cocked a hip and bent a long leg as if she were chatting to a friend, not addressing a packed hall. As she spoke she maintained a smile at all times. Even as she wrapped her lips around an ‘o’, the rest of her face pulled the other way.

It was the newspapers that had given her the moniker the Perfect Woman . Natalie and Delphi had discussed in their letters what constituted perfect. The journalists who’d come up with the name were undoubtedly male but even so, Natalie had expected Prunella to be much more athletic. She showed good leadership though and she had charisma too. Perfect or not, she had captivated the Grand Hall.

Wherever she moved at least one photographer crouched in front of her, the flashbulb illuminating her every few moments. Delphi swooned, her red lips stretched to their limits by her smile. She was so happy and that had to be a good thing. Her illness had a habit of ruling her life.

Prunella’s voice echoed about the hall as she told them of her mother’s dying wish. How she’d hoped her work with the Women’s League of Health and Beauty, and her aims for spreading peace and cooperation, would continue.

A bugle blew behind Prunella. The resounding cheers faded as the lights dimmed, and their collective heads bowed. Delphi had warned her this display would be sad and yet still a tingle travelled along her spine. The tribute to Prunella’s mother was to be the Representation of War that she’d helped choreograph for the previous year’s rally.

First came the deathly rattle of the drum. Next the women erupted into the shrill whistle of Tipperary. Then the drums retaliated with a rat-a-tat-tat, before the assault of the bugles and then the women won the battle with the unity of their voices. The hairs on her arms betrayed her for the third time that day as a slow procession of women criss-crossed the stage; some bandaged, one a white strip bound around her eyes, feeling the air in front of her.

The sight of one woman as she propped up another, drunk with pain, clogged her throat with a fist-sized lump. She’d imagined her two brothers had been there for each other at the end in that same way. The idea that they hadn’t died alone had been a story she’d had to believe. One small island of consolation in an ocean of grief.

She wished she’d remembered to bring that damned handkerchief to tuck in her left short leg now. Delphi stroked the back of Natalie’s arm and then opened her palm to proffer her own crumpled hankie. The two of them held hands while Natalie blotted her eyes.

‘Isn’t it wonderful?’ Delphi whispered.

*

The dance demonstration came to an end and they all began to march in formation. Each large group of them making up the spokes of a wheel. It put her in mind of the photograph she’d seen in the Times of last year’s Nazi rally in Nuremberg where they’d formed a human swastika.

‘What do you think?’ Delphi asked as they marched, knees high.